W. Glasgow Phillips

Billy Mitchell is twenty-two years old, college educated, and on the verge of entering high society – or whatever “high society” Tuscaloosa, Alabama, has to offer a young man in 1972. But when he falls in love with an inmate at his father’s mental institution, Billy must either muster the courage to elope with his new love (which involves kidnapping her) or accept a prescribed – and unwelcome – role within the Southern patriarchy. In the struggle to make sense of his situation, Billy uncovers a painful and complex past – including his own racist sentiments toward Nigel, his childhood companion, and his mother’s death in a burning car with her lesbian lover during their flight from Tuscaloosa twenty years earlier. W. Glasgow Phillips has written a sensitive, sensual, and often hilarious new book in the tradition of the Southern novel that simultaneously offers a poignant critique of the genre. It is remarkable that a writer so young should approach such complex subject matter with this much subtlety, originality, and humor. No doubt Tuscaloosa will become a minor classic; it heralds the birth of a new voice, one that promises to be heard for years.